{ Islam from inside }

Tafsir (Sura 7: verse 152) - false religion (the golden calf)

"(As for) those who took the calf (for
worship), surely wrath from their Lord and humiliation shall overtake
them, and thus do We recompense the devisers of lies. (Qur'an 7:152)"

This verse refers to the story of the golden calf made and worshipped
by the Israelites after their exodus from Egypt. While Moses (Musa
(a.s.)) was
in communion with God on the heights of mount Sinai, while revelation
was in the process of being sent down to him, while God was manifesting
His presence to Moses and divulging to him the secrets of creation and
of the structure of
religion, some of the Israelites (under the direction and supervision
of a person called Samiri) constructed and worshipped a statue of a
golden calf.

The worshippers of the calf had not turned against religion in and
of
itself – they were not rejecters of belief in God. They sought the
divine but they sought it through the worship of a concrete
manifestation - through a visible, tangible object, an idol - one
constructed of ornaments that were a symbol of worldly wealth, power,
and pleasures. They
engaged in shirk (idolatry
or association). Through
this desire of theirs for a worldly, visible, ostentatious
representation of the
divine, they became deceived.

This deception came about through the action of Samiri, a person who
was endowed with a degree of knowledge and insight into religion, but
who used that insight to fasify rather than clarify matters for the
Israelites. Together with Samiri they became inventors of a counterfeit
religion – a counterfeit belief - a belief that was a direct antithesis
to the purity of the revelation that was simultaneously manifesting on
Mount Sinai and within the heart of Moses. While this powerful descent
of Divine knowledge occured on the heights of Sinai, at the base of the
mountain a caricature, a parody of this Divine process was unfolding.
This forgery emerged when the nascent belief of the Israelites was
still taking shape and was, historically, still in it's infancy. This
is perhaps, part of the reason for the qur'an's harsh condemnation of
their action. Samiri's deception was an attempt to "knife the baby", to
kill or distort the religion before it took on an aspect of solidity
and maturity, by creating a counter-religion.

What does this mean? What is a counterfeit religion? It is one that
imitates real religion, but it exteriorizes and materializes that which
is above and beyond matter, that which remains unseen and that which is
only represented by abstract symbols in real religion. It takes
something which is, in its essence, non-material, super-sensory (beyond
the senses), spiritual, of a higher order – and converts it into
something of a lower order, one that is nevertheless compelling because
it is immediate, tangible, material, worldly, easily perceptible. It
makes a solidified (but gross and distorted) image here in this lower
world and in doing so attempts to waylay or kill deeper understanding.

In order to do this it imitates real religion but it is an imitation
that is gross, materialistic, feeble, and low – a burlesque of
traditional
religion. But for this false religion to achieve acceptance, it must
have some element of truth in it. For a deception in any realm to
succeed, it must have some connection, however tenuous, with a true
source - just as a counterfeit coin must be struck in the image of a
real coin even while the substance it is made of is of lower value than
the gold of the original. And just as a counterfeit currency creates
confusion and mischief once it's in wide circulation, the same is true
with a counterfeit or deluded belief.

The nafs (the soul) is the locus where unseen realities unfold and
manifest – they unfurl within, and expand human knowledge, intellect,
and consciousness beyond the limits of the many and varying systems of
knowledge created and utilized by man. Our internal self is the
place for apperception of the unseen – God manifests His truths to the
purified human heart and displays his signs within the human nafs –
within those nafs which have
awoken to the awareness that in man there is hidden an axis that
cuts across all the worlds, both high and low. The imitative religion
of Samiri moves the locus away from the internal to the external (a
crude and vulgar external).

In Sura 20 (verses 85 to 98), the qur'an tells the story of how
Samiri deceived the people with the
golden
calf. When Moses departs for Sinai, his whole being is suffused with
the
power of the Divine attraction that calls him to Itself. Samiri notices
something in the dust of the footsteps of Moses. It is as if there is a
trace, a perfume, a presence left behind in the footsteps of those who
are close to God. Samiri is able to discern this presence where others
are not - so he has some degree of insight which they lack - but at the
same time the lower aspect of his self (nafs al-amarra) is strong and
misdirects his
discernment towards a base end.

"He (Samiri) said: I saw what they did
not see, so I took a handful
(of
the dust) from the footsteps of the messenger, then I threw it in the
casting (of the calf); thus did my soul (nafs) commend to me." (Qur'an
20:96)

It is the spirit, the spiritual presence in the dust that causes a
semblance of life to come into the calf - a feeble but
nevertheless mysterious facsimile of life. Samiri knew something of
the value of spirit, so he knew a spiritual force was communicated to
the place where the messenger had struck his foot. He seized the dust
in the traces of the Messenger and threw it into the casting for the
golden calf. In this way he gives a spiritual aura to the calf.

"Phenomena, by themselves, are not proof of spiritual truth" (Rene
Guenon). Samiri uses his perceptiveness of the spiritual phenomena of
the dust for gain, for ego, for
deception - he turns the qualities of true religion on their head and
deceives others through this to create a counter to Moses' religion.

Samiri clearly has some level of spiritual insight but his insight
is
used to commit a kind of spiritual theft in order to deceive the people
and create a counterfeit religion, a counter to the religion manifested
through Moses. In the absence of a messenger who is connected to the
spiritual
world, in the absence of someone whose essential being is consciously
present not just in this world but through all the higher worlds,
feeble but deceptive counterfeits to religion are able to emerge. When
Moses was absent for forty days and nights, Samiri used his insight to
deceive - he mixed truth and falsehood in order to lead into complete
falsehood.

This can occur in the absence of real knowledge, when
people's discernment of truth and fasehood becomes based on opinion and
desire and even spiritual truths exist only to serve the goals of the
lower nafs (self). When Moses returned from Sinai, Samiri's deception
crumbled away. In the presence of truth, the shallowness and
decrepitude of Samiri's counterfeit became manifest.

The world is now in a situation similar to the one described
in
the
story of Samiri. Moses withdrew to Sinai for only forty days. We are in
a time when the line of the Prophets has been sealed for over fourteen
hundred years.
Many Samiri's have come and gone and many more will emerge and multiply
in the future. Their trait is that they use their discernment and
considerable abilities to create a path, a way, a worldview that bends
religion
and revelation to the service of the nafs
amarra (the lower self that
commands one to move in a direction counter to what is set out in
revelation). Those that follow them will perhaps distort religion till
it bears little or no resemblance to the profound truths that descended
through the Messenger and which were clarified through the lives of his
close companions and the Imams. The result can only be an enfeebled,
ineffective religion which
substitutes vague sentiments or a deluded extremism in place of the
profoundity of the highest
aql,
a bending to desire in place of bending to revelation, a removal
of the boundaries set by the revelation and creation of strictures and
norms that are counter to revelation - deceptive counterfeits of real
religion.

The story of the golden calf is a pointer to the importance of
making intense and continuous efforts in maintaining, cultivating,
developing, and inculcating deep
understanding and knowledge of religion and revelation - an
understanding that is not hampered, conditioned and shaped by the
changing currents, desires, trends, fashions, pressures, politics, and
ideologies of our
times. In the absence of such efforts, golden calves and Samiris will
flourish...until the Mehdi from the family of the Prophet, like Moses
descending from the mountain,
returns bearing the illuminative gift of true perspicacity and
profound knowledge.

THE SACRED INTELLECT

"The Prophets of God (may His Peace and Blessings be upon them all)
strove from the outset to enrich the intellectual life of men – by
calling them to what already lies and has been placed in their innate
nature and essence. The Prince of Believers, ‘Ali (upon whom be Peace),
has said in this context: “God raised amongst the people His Messengers
and sent Prophet after Prophet to them so as to have the Covenant of
His nature fulfilled…and so as to bring out their hidden intellects.”

There are few words that are seen as abundantly as “intellect” and
“knowledge” in the Qur’an. In the Qur’anic terminology, these two words
signify faithful representations of concrete reality and denote all the
levels of intellect and knowledge - not being limited by any means to
just empirical or instrumental reason and knowledge.

The highest level of intellect is the sacred intellect. The sacred
intellect, enlightened directly by Divine Grace and inspired by the
Holy Spirit, reveals the Divine Word to man. The next level, that of
conceptual and discursive reason (in both its aspects of speculative
and practical rationality), applies itself to deliberation on the
origin and end of man, defining thereby his duties and responsibilities
in this world.

The sacred intellect and conceptual reason are divine proofs and His
“messengers” – their role being complementary. Man’s conceptual reason
allows him access to higher truths and knowledge. The sacred intellect,
in the beginning, actuates and engenders man’s discursive reason, and
in the end, opens up the higher realms of being for him."

About this article

Anyone who reads the Qur'an is likely to be struck by the unique
nature of its construction, its unusual and constantly shifting rhythms
and the sudden transmutations and displacements in its subject matter.
At first this ever changing literary terrain seems an obstacle to
understanding, but the more time one spends with this book, the more
organic, the more natural the flow of its words feel. It is almost
like flying over an ever-changing landscape - rolling valleys
punctuated by jagged rocks, forests and plains giving way to upthrust
mountains, high plateaus broken by deep lakes, deserts sprinkled
with oasis' and cleft by canyons. Despite the variety of the forms,
despite the startling contrast of adjacent features, a complex organic
beauty underlies and unites all the various elements. These "tafsirs"
emerged from numerous brief scattered notes made while reading the
qur'an (along with numerous commentaries and the works of various
scholars whose profound analyses strongly effected my views) and
reflecting on its content. As well, for a number of years
I have participated in a hallakha, a qur'anic study circle, and many of
the
tafsirs presented here were originally researched for presentation at
that forum.